Contents

The idea

A giant undersea glass dome isn't an especially original idea, however the project is partly to show that these things can be made by hand to people who would assume otherwise, so the whole process will have screenshots of each stage as it's built. There's also fun to be had in the construction process (getting people to join in, fixing problems etc). Building structures in water can be surprisingly challenging, as there are many problems and issues that you wouldn't find in construction of a land structure.

The undersea glass dome will have forests and grass and be 120 block diameter. Similar Projects include UnderWorld, which is the roughly same size but a hollowed out cavern, and Tayrons BioDomes, which are above ground. The live map was used to find an unpopulated area nearby with water that would be suitable to build UnderWater.

Howto

Building underwater needs some special techniques (the area has to be drained first, then build the dome, then flood the area again and remove the boundary walls from inside the dome). The size of the dome means a sand source nearby is important when picking a location so that we have enough sand to make the glass required for the dome.

Using the Minecraft Structure Planner it's possible to calculate the materials needed for the dome in advance and without planning the curves required on a dome this size might lead to very expensive mistakes in terms of otherwise having to break glass to fix the issues.

In practise

A 80x80 square perimeter was first marked out and then the area was levelled. To assist in this players were paid in saved up game items for assistance, for instance to remove all trees from a small island that was in the build perimeter and to help dig.

As the dig site got deeper it was connected to a nearby rail system, a grass ladder was used to send grass to bedrock level and an area was built to store and smelt sand for the glass required for the dome.

The nearby coastlines were planted up with saplings in case more more wood was needed later for smelting. Excess iron and lava found when digging was stored to power furnaces as buckets of lava for smelting the sand.

The creator used up some valuable items to hire more players to make the digging task less laborious and prevent burnout. The final stable pay rate was/is roughly one block of diamond or lapis for a 5x4 hole to bedrock. Assistance was provided to the diggers in the form of shovels, pickaxes, food and similar as required/available. The assistants were allowed to keep any minerals they encountered whilst digging their shafts.

Railway Connection

Connecting tunnel

The western railway project came past the site during construction so in order to link to this on 18th-19th June a connecting tunnel was made that would take a trail from directly under the train pylon to the undersea dome. The construction process is shown in the sequence of pictures here.

Fill area with gravel, then dig out the tunnel

Check the walls are pure gravel or sand

Cover over the excavated area 1 block below sea level with soil

Fill above the roof with water from buckets leaving still water

Destroy the roof so the water falls down

Remove gravel walls by removing the bottom blocks from within the tunnel

Station

A tower to house the station and connect the tunnel to the overhead railway was started on the 26th June, made from glass and cobble.